Contact Us
Get in touch with the centre.
For more information on the Olaf Stapledon Centre for Speculative Futures or to join a mailing list to find out about events, please email futures@liverpool.ac.uk.
For more information about the Science Fiction collections in the Library’s Special Collections & Archives, and how they can be accessed, please contact scastaff@liverpool.ac.uk.
Directors
Dr Will Slocombe (English)
Will is interested in representations of Artificial Intelligence, and the fictions and discourses around technologies and technological development, across media. He also engages in work about the relevance of speculative fiction and speculation to our understanding of potential futures, and tends to be responsible for handling any consultancies and contract research for the Centre. He is interested in PhD and postdoctoral projects that explore science fiction generally, but especially in the areas of AI, technology, and futures studies.
Prof. Michael Hauskeller (Philosophy)
Michael has written extensively on transhumanism, human enhancement, and the meaning of life. He is interested in speculative literature (including but not limited to fiction) discussing the potential of using technology to create better worlds and better people. A new interest is the nature of time, how it is experienced, and how the passing of time affects our lives.
Joanne Fitton (Deputy Director Libraries, Museums, Galleries)
Joanne has a background in archival and curatorial practice, with a strong focus on cultural heritage collections development and usability, with current interest in digital reunification of heritage materials, and the creation of inclusive research environments in heritage spaces. She has strategic oversight for Cultural Heritage Services at the University of Liverpool, including Special Collections and Archives, the Garstang Museum and the Victoria Gallery and Museum. The Science Fiction collections, housed in Special Collections and Archives form a core part of the University’s research resources.
Full Members
Dr Harald Braun (History)
Harald E. Braun is interested in past representations of the future and how they are reflected in contemporary narratives and speculations about the future. He engages with work that makes accessible the ways in which our understanding of the past can constructively inform our planning for the future. He is interested in PhD projects that engage with the ways in which representations of distant historical periods inform contemporary speculative fiction (including speculative fiction video games) as well as the future of violence.
Dr Becky Davnall (Philosophy)
Dr Tom Dillon (Special Collections and Archives)
Tom Dillon is the curator for the Science Fiction Collections held at the University of Liverpool library. Apart from looking after the collection Tom is broadly interested in the history of science fiction magazines, queer science fiction, and heritage futures.
Dr Hannah Little (Communication and Media)
Hannah Little is interested in the use of fiction and storytelling to communicate science, and how science fiction can shape our understanding of science and technology. Most recently, I have been exploring how science fiction can be used as a tool to generate hypotheses for how the language and communication emerge and evolve. I am interested in supervising PhDs on the intersection of science fiction, science communication, and the public understanding of science.
Dr Daniel O’Connor (English)
Daniel O’Connor is a creative writer interested in speculative fiction imagining near-futures, especially in relation to challenges related to ageing, migration and climate. In addition, he also has a critical interest in contemporary literary fiction, with a particular focus on how speculative elements can be utilised in realist settings to imagine political and social alternatives. He is interested in creative writing PhDs in these areas.
Prof. David Seed (English)
David Seed’s work spans the breadth of science fiction, but with a particular interest in the Cold War and mid-century American fiction. He also works on spy fiction and atomic fiction. He is the editor of Future Wars: The Anticipations and the Fears (2012) and numerous other works on sf writers and writing.
Dr Sam Solnick (English)
Sam Solnick works on representations of ecology and environment across a range of modes and genres. He's interested in climate futures (and their representation in Cli-Fi and other forms of sf); animal studies; posthumanism; energy humanities; and the ecological dimensions of the weird/monstrous.
Dr Hannah Spaulding (Communication & Media)
Dr. Hannah Spaulding is a Lecturer in Digital Screen Studies in the department of Communication and Media. Her research focuses on the history of screen media technologies, with a focus on gender, domesticity, and surveillance. She is particularly interested in the ways new media technologies are often linked to speculative fiction about the future of everyday life.
Associate Members
- Prof. Georgina Endfield (APVC)
- Dr Floriana Grasso (Computer Science)
- Dr Hannah Little (Communication and Media)
- Prof. Greg Lynall (English)
- Dr Emma Moreton (English)
- Dr Sam Solnick (English)
- Dr Hannah Spaulding (Communication & Media)
Affiliate Members
Dr Phoenix Alexander (University of California, Riverside)
Dr Molly Cobb (Honorary Fellow, English)
Molly Cobb is interested in representations of psychology, identity, and the self and the ways in which science fiction enhances, alters, or subverts how these concepts are understood or presented. She is also interested in how the psychology of longing and escapism can be read through time travel narratives and alternate futures.
Prof Barry Dainton
Dr Glyn Morgan (Science Museum)
Andy Sawyer (Honorary Fellow, English)
Andy Sawyer has been researching Terry Pratchett with particular interest to the way he engages with the implications of social and technological change in the "fantasy" language of the Discworld series. He is also interested in the way Folk Horror and "Archaeology" fiction articulates anxieties about time, and the way 1950’s sf, especially the work of Charles Chilton, expressed the aspirations and anxieties of British popular culture.
Current PGR students
Faye Lynch (Literary Studies), “The Fembot in the Post-WWII Anglosphere”
Faye's research is concerned with how gender impacts depictions of robotics and AI, particularly in terms of how the 'fembot' is constructed in the SF imagination. She is especially interested in how these depictions illuminate our changing cultural perceptions of technology, gender, and sexuality, and how these perceptions interact with each other.
Eleanor McAdam (Creative Writing), “AI Bodies & Reproductive Technologies: The Development of a Speculative Future through S(1)3N4”
Eleanor ‘s research interests concern the representation of Artificial Intelligence in science fiction literature. In both their creative and critical work, they research the fictionalisation of coding languages as an exploration of AI consciousness, embodiment and the future of reproductive technologies, and the concept of corporate surveillance AI.
Geraldine Seymour (Literary Studies), “What Does It Mean To Be a Thing?”
Rather than exploring what it means to be human, Geraldine’s thesis examines what it is to be a thing in science fictional representations of artificial intelligence alongside contemporary non-fiction commentaries. Her work particularly focuses on British women’s science-fictional imaginings of Artificial Intelligence since 1999.
David Tierney (Creative Writing), “Animal Communication in Science Fiction”
David’s thesis, ‘Ark: The Obfuscation and Emergence of Nonhuman Animal Communication in Contemporary Science Fiction’, explores the representation of animal communication both in his thesis novel, Ark, and in other SF texts. David is particularly interested in how experimental narrative form can be used to depict animal communication and cognition.
Alex Veregan (Literary Studies), “The Final Frontier: Space and the Rearticulation of the American West in Science Fiction”
While SF-Westerns have assumed many guises over the past century, they are notable for their fascination with SF’s relationship to frontier space: in particular, they examine how SF’s frontier problematic is suffused with the mythic-historical connotations of the Frontier Myth. Alex’s research considers how SF-Western texts do not merely reflect, but actively contribute to ongoing discussions about the future, influencing public and political understandings of the kind of futures which are desirable and attainable for the United States.
Completed PGR Research
- Liam Burrell, “Temporality, Subjectivity, Capitalism”
- Tom Kewin, “The Posthuman Curator”